Is Christianity inseparable from patriarchy, or can we
somehow disentangle the threads?
I am beginning to suspect that this task of imagination is
the urgent task of the church today. It is no secret that numbers of
churchgoers are falling, and I suspect that this is because the dominant narrative
and metaphor of traditional Christianity – patriarchy – which used to also be
the dominant narrative of traditional society, is beginning to fail. Hallelujah
to that!
It is exciting to be part of a new generation of scholars
and practioners who are re-focusing on Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection as
the paradigm of gender-bending patriarchy-smashing. Jesus refused to enact the
cultural expectations of masculinity and power, instead literally bursting from
the man-made tomb that he was placed in by powerful men.
It was a question that came into particular focus again for
me this morning, as I sat saying the Church of England’s morning prayer in a
coffee shop in my parish, with a young woman parishioner. Today is the feast
day of St Bride, the patron saint of one of my parish churches, and we were
struck by the contrast between her story – as an abbess of a mixed monastery –
and the patriarchal structures that the daily readings are imbued with.
How do we separate the patriarchal structures that the
Biblical texts were written in, reflect, take for granted (and, granted,
sometimes challenge and/or subvert), from the ‘core’ or ‘essence’ of the
Scriptures – the good news, if you like? Is it possible to do so? To me, at
least, it seems obvious that it is desirable to do so, but I’m fully aware that
in itself is a contested claim. And as a historian and theologian, I wonder how
much it is possible to separate the context of the scriptures from their
content. Since so much is revealed to us through contested history, narrative,
story, poetry, is it even possible to say that there is a ‘truth’ that can be
found within or beyond the context?
I gave a talk at a conference for women preachers back in the
autumn, where I tried to untangle some few threads to give some strategies for
preaching the text without drowning in patriarchy – look for the few women that
ARE mentioned – they tend to be there for a reason, not accidentally. Look for
what their stories do in the context of the main ‘male’ narrative – they often
reflect on, or give a counterpoint to, the other characters or emotions that
are portrayed in the same or adjoining passages, and often in really
fascinating ways. Particularly look at, and take seriously, the few words that
women speak – given how much the nature of the narratives tend to silence women
by privileging male experience, when women DO speak, their words are hardly
likely to be irrelevant. Study the original languages, where at all possible –
sometimes our translations misgender passages or interpretations, by, for
example using male pronouns because they are conventionally used by a language
for a mixed group of men and women.
So there are things we can do, as feminist readers of the
scriptures.
But more fundamentally, we have an issue with the whole
patriarchal structure of society that is the context in which the scriptures were
written, which provides their dominant metaphors and analogies, and which has
then used the scriptural status of those dominant metaphors to justify itself.
As Mary Daly put it so well, ‘when God is male, then the male is God’. Or in a
different context, James I is said to have declared, ‘no bishop, no king’,
recognising that the church and societal hierarchies were intimately bound
together as part of the same interpretative framework and worldview.
This is a much deeper question than simply looking for the
women in Bible passages, or (correctly) pointing out that the scriptures often
contain a subversive undercurrent which speaks of liberation and critiques the
power structures that it mirrors and is used to bolster.
It isn’t just about maleness or masculinity, though of
course these are key metaphors and components within patriarchy as a system of
power. This is about the whole system of partriarchy – with all its
ramifications for kingship, lordship, inheritance, strength, power, battle,
success, as well as questions of gender, masculinities and femininities.
Patriarchy is implicated in class and race struggles as well as gender
struggles – it is a whole system of hierarchical values, where those who best
fit the reigning view of masculinity (who yes, might, on rare occasions, be a
female, or gay, but who generally won’t be) are assumed to not just have de
facto power, but to be the ones who ought
to be in charge.
In morning prayer this morning we read psalm 99, which
repeatedly refers to God using the metaphor and dramatic tropes of kingship and
power. It begins:
‘The Lord is king; let the peoples tremble; he is enthroned
above the cherubim: let the earth shake’.
If we remove all the references to God as a king or lord –
which are of course human metaphors – from the Bible, or indeed from our
contemporary prayer books or song books - the pages would crumble into so much
confetti.
Trying to pick hymns for a service that don’t reinforce patriarchy is
possible, but blooming hard work. Trying to address the patriarchal threads in the
Bible readings can seem relentless – I don’t want to lose sight of everything
else that is in there, and preach an unbalanced diet, but I also don’t want to
let the patriarchal undercurrents go unchallenged.
Does this mean that we can’t ever rescue Christianity from
patriarchy? Or is it possible to dream of a future where patriarchy has been replaced
with egalitarianism, and Christianity is still true and loved? I do hope the
latter is true, and it seems to me that it must be possible, since to me and to
so many feminist and liberationist theologians the driving motivation and
rationale for smashing the patriarchy is our Christian faith and the call to
follow the example of Jesus Christ.
Disentangling these threads, of Christianity and patriarchy, is not going to be an easy task. But it is one we must face, with courage and a sense of humour.
Because ultimately, I simply don't buy the arguments that the Bible says God is a man and so men are more God-like than women, or that God is king-like and so monarchies and hierarchies are more God-like than egalitarian societies. The Bible was written by people trying to make sense of how they had encountered God, or heard God speak, in their own contexts and cultures, just as we all inevitably do. They inevitably - just as we do - reached for their own metaphors. To deify those metaphors simply because they are in the Bible is, I'm afraid, to indulge in an unproductive process of circular argument.
Jesus, not the scriptures, is God's definitive Word. To be in relationship with a person is a two-way process, and so it will and should be constantly changing - because even if God is unchanging, we are not.
Can Christianity be disentangled from patriarchy? I do hope so.